Can utilizing social media and visual programming increase retention of minorities in programming classes?

This paper discusses how Social Digital Literacy is being used in CS1 to teach critical and computational thinking by delivering content to students through the use of social media. Social Digital Literacy (SDL) is the way in which people use social media to enhance their social network, effectively increase their knowledge base, while communicating clearly and professionally through the use of social media. The increased popularity of social media amongst college students makes it an opportune time to consider a new form of literacy based on how technology is used by students, the devices that students interact with on a daily bases and the mainstream acceptance of social media in daily life. In order to retain students in computing classes, students are taught in an efficacious manner how to capitalize on the technology that they use on a daily basis. By increasing their SDL proficiency to become a more informed student, a well versed employee and consciously aware of what they post to social media. The expectation is that the approach being used can be implemented in any introductory programming course.